Tank Emplacement Low Profile. Designed for the Japanese Type 97 medium tank 1:56 scale variant No1 of 03

Continuing my theme of the Pacific Theatre of Operations and my desire to provide my gaming friend’s with a very visual games board I realised I had not considered that the Imperial Japanese Army made extensive use of dug in and heavily defend tank and self-propelled guns.

I truly thought my journey of digging tank emplacements was over when I completed the 16th of the timber reinforced ones. Sadly I could not resist the allure of an almost submerged hull and of course what sane tank commander would not want close infantry support.

The emplacement is approximately 180 mm by 120 mm and about 25 mm high to the top of the turret hatch. There are 5 shallow sandbagged rifle pits.

The Type 97 Medium tank was designed by M. Bergman of New Zealand whose permission I have to rework his files to create something new that adds to the gaming communities range of models, on this occasion the only separate piece from the base is the turret. If you check out M Bergman's other files you will find different turret options could be rescaled to fit this tank emplacement.

My intention is for you to add your own converted infantry figures. I anticipate that just as I had to cut the tanks lower wheels and tracks off you will to need to remove from the knee or mid-thigh downward on figures you decide to add to the emplacement.

If you have a resin printer then consider buying files from Studio Grozny who has an excellent range of Japanese and Australian figures. The figures shown in the screen shot come from their Japanese collection.

I have test printed the files and used a time saving 0.15mm layer height to print the models. I would recommend using 0.1mm layer height if you are printing them for yourself.

The scenic emplacement 12 hours to print at 0.15mm. The turret about 2 hours?

This model was designed by Neal Bowskill Copyright June 2022. These files may not be used to print for commercial gain.